Circular Reasoning

At last week’s debate Jack Layton and Elizabeth May were clamouring for a “buy Canadian” policy. Jack said something to the effect that we shouldn’t be cutting down our pine trees and letting someone else build the tables. We should be building the tables too! Forget about the sound economic principle of Comparative Advantage and lets dig a little deeper into the rhetoric.

A few minutes later good ol’Liza remarked that Canada needs to do its part to help the developing world and pledged her support of 0.7 of Canada’s GDP on a yearly basis for this pet project of hers. Never mind the how. And then before the how could be asked Jack nodded in affirmation.

Let me get this straight Jack and Liza don’t want to let countries like Mexico and the Dominican Republic buy our lumber so they can develop their own secondary manufacturing industries, but at the same time supports a plan to extort Canadian money to hand over in the form of massive welfare packages to the very same people. Brilliant? Does anyone else have trouble with this type of circular reasoning?

The real difference lies in the results. Where international welfare encourages idleness, corruption (the emphasis shifts from productivity to creating a perception of neediness), and subordination (most aid money ends up in the hands of tyrants who use it to support their own agendas), while trade on the other hand, encourages technological advance, cooperation, independence, responsibility, and dignity and equality between countries.

Leftism has never been about goodwill, instead it is about power. Sure you may claim that we can all break close to even on wealth redistribution schemes but the point is that the government is now picking who wins and who loses, and it also gives them the ability to reward their friends and punish their enemies, in other words maintain control over their populations—by destroying the independence of the people over which they govern.